Is the surviving interest in rock music largely dependent on its glory days?

There is one newish member who has ruined the Best of ____ threads by randomly posting hundreds of records I suspect he's never actually heard. They're of little use to me either anymore and I actually like new music.

 

We'd have to go back to the 90s when it seemed every R&B song was from groups crooning. I guess it was supposed to be some sort of doo-wop renascence or something, an escape from hip-hop. We did get some fantastic talent from that era: Boys II Men and EnVogue, to name two of them. There were the so-called "boy bands" who also came out with some pretty decent songs in that era. But, again, hip-hop won out, and that is not a bad thing, but increasingly, the R&B, or soul became the music of the old folks. The youngbloods want things of their own, just like how the baby-boomers in the 60s and 60s wanted different cultural markers from their parents.

This forum is getting old, and a lot of the complaints about the alleged demise of rock, or the bemoaning of R&B music is coming from the old(er) folks.

 

Of course it's troll bait, and, like Pavlov's dog, we all keep gravitating to these threads, even when we recognize them as such.

I have no idea why the moderators didn't shut this down days ago.

 

I'm at the tail end of the WWII baby-boomers. My parents had albums and 45s by artists as diverse as Frankie Lane, Procol Harum, Henry Mancini, and Bob Seeger. But, we didn't have any Elvis, Rolling Stones, or Beatles. No show tunes albums, neither! But, the vast majority of my family's records were jazz and soul music. Me, and my sister closest to me were also into pop/rock of the 60s and 70s.

 

Blues, then rock, was built on sexual topics. Funny how people try to run away from that now.

 

That Strypes song sounds like a thousand other songs I heard back in the 80s!

 

Sounds like hundreds of songs I heard in the 90s.

 

I'm not being obtuse, but none of the three songs I quoted above appeal to me. I cam't relate to the R&B one at all. I also prefer real instruments, or synthetic or sampled sounds that sound real. I'm tired of mumble rapping and singing.

 

OK I like this track but as someone earlier has pointed out it sounds like any number of bands from the 90's. The other thing, as you point out, it's 13 years old. It's not modern its not NOW.
Back in 1970 when I was a lad we would never entertain the thought of listening to ancient old 13 year old music. We had The Who, we had Hendrix, we had Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zep.... This was OUR musicWTF would we listen something that old people listen to. A few years later the punks came along with THEIR music & our music was the old people music.
Since Grunge & then later Britpop this changing of the guard seems to have died off. What we need NOW is something new to come along & consign the old folks back off into the background & stamp their own spin on things.

BTW as we got older we realised that being young dum & full of ... & ignoring the music of the past was in fact pretty stupid.

 

Are you seriously accusing me of trolling for not thinking the Black Keys or Raconteurs are amazing bands? I promise that I'm not trolling and I really don't understand why you think I am.

If the quality of rock was as good as it was in the glory days, I doubt it would be so far removed from the mainstream.

 

Right, it's nowhere near being new. I do think it sounds modern in comparison to say, Tom Petty though.

I do have plenty of 2019 music that I listen to, but it happens to not be rock.

 

And yet, you put eight straight posts on the thread...

 

Unfortunately, I would have to answer 'yes' to this question. People are more interested in hip-hop these days. It's all I ever hear blaring out of cars anymore (except my own, of course ).

 

a (fair) few post back someone posed the question

Black music was amazing in the 1970's. What happened? It's so terrible now.

My thoughts on this is that the black audience likes to move on, they let go & evolve. The white audience on the other hand likes the comfort of the familias & likes to hold on.

For me my comfort zone for black music is blues from the 50's, southern soul & jazz from the 60's. I certainly haven't moved with the times in fact my discovery was by going backwards.

 

It's just music, forget about how "old" it is. If something "works" (when other things don't,) does it really matter how "old" it is?

 

I think it (Black music) has greatly narrowed down to a "beat" and a "rhyme". Like most other "classic" music, it has lost it's swing and melody.

 

I never said it wasn’t, and I’m not trying to run away from anything.

 

Black music was popular on radio long before the sixties.

Nat King Cole, The Platters, Sam Cooke, Tommy Edwards, Lloyd Price, Dave "Baby" Cortez, Chubby Checker, The Drifters, and Ray Charles all had US #1 hits between 1951 and 1960.

 

On Saturday, I went to Summer Sonic here in Tokyo. It was a rock-heavy lineup on that day, and it had been sold out for months. I enjoyed a number of young rock acts, none of whom seem to owe anything to “classic rock”. Tash Sultana, an astonishingly talented alt-reggae one-woman band from Melbourne, alt-rockers Bring Me the Horizon and Foals from the UK, and Japan’s own “cute-metal” pioneers, Babymetal.

Of course, a veteran act closed the hot summer day, as the Red Hot Chili Peppers played a wonderful set in front of 35,000+ delirious fans in Chiba marine stadium, which functions as the festival’s “main stage”. It was an amazing atmosphere, and made me appreciate the “gift of live music”.

 

Oh gosh yes, Tash is amazing supposedly, she's on an entirely different level when listened to live on a concert.

 

Jesus, do people still talk in terms of 'black' and 'white' music?

Does the black music have to sit at the back of the record shop?

 

Mostly it doesn't get into the shop, whilst the white artists that have "borrowed" from them sit front row. Do you need a few examples ?

 

A lot of black Americans refer to that as "grown folks' music".

 

Black folk got soul.